Perennial national champ Texas Wesleyan University will soon gear up to host the NCTTA’s South Regional table tennis tournament.

The February 24-25 event on the TWU Rams home turf is booked at the Sid Richardson Center on the Fort Worth campus. Teams coming to the Lone Star State event include: Mississippi College, the University of Florida, the University of Texas, UT-Dallas, UT-Arlington, University of South Florida, Georgia Tech, Florida State University and rookies to the scene Florida Atlantic University.

Texas Wesleyan dominated the action at the Texas divisional tournament on February 10. There were automatic bids going to the South Regionals for the Texas Wesleyan coed team, and women’s squad.

The mighty Rams coed team went a perfect 7-0, while the talented Lady Rams team recorded a solid 3-0 mark.

The Texas Wesleyan Rams had the top four finishers in both women’s singles and men’s singles. For the Lady Rams, Wenting Zha finished No. 1, followed by Yue Wu, Edina Haracic of Bosnia Herzogovina, and freshman Vivaleta Manastyrskaya of Belarus. Jinxin Wang took the men’s singles title, followed by Jishan Liang of China, Bruno Ventura Dos Anjos of Brazil and Jason Plog of Germany.

With a diverse lineup featuring incredible skills, the TWU table tennis roster of 39 players consists of standouts from around the globe. Texas Wesleyan has won 13 national coed team titles over the years. Jasna Rather serves as the university’s table tennis program director. Doru Gheorghe serves as the women’s coach.

The University of Texas Longhorns team from Austin finished second at the divisional tournament in Fort Worth to punch its ticket to the South Regionals.

Mississippi College won the Dixie Division tournament in the Fall with wins over Mississippi State and the University of Alabama. MC proved too much to handle for the visiting MSU Bulldogs on the Clinton campus Feb. 10. The Alabama squad was unable to make the trip to MC on Saturday.

Sparking the MC Choctaws triumph Saturday were such players as assistant coach Tomotaka “Tomo’’ Yoshitomi of Japan, and Xiang “Ali’’ He of China. Both qualified for singles. Players including Weiheng Liu, Tong Zhang, QingWei Sun, Caleb Shipman and Jeremy Gore round out the squad.

MC was selected to the South Regionals as one of the wild card teams along with schools like Florida State and UT-Dallas.

A Dixie Division powerhouse for a decade, Mississippi College upset Texas Wesleyan to narrowly win the 2015 NCTTA national championship in Eau Clare, Wisconsin. MC’s coed team finished in second place at the national championships in 2016 and 4th place last season.

This weekend the NCTTA 2018 Midwest Regionals will be hosted by and held at Lindenwood University, from where it will be live-streamed. 12 schools and more than 60 College Table Tennis student athletes from Midwestern states (such as Missouri, Illinois, Nebraska, Wisconsin, Minnesota, etc.) will pour into the Lindenwood University campus to battle for the chance at school glory.

College Table Tennis National Championship qualification is on the line; qualifying teams will be the top three men’s/coed teams, the top 2 women's teams, the top 8 men's singles, and the top 4 women’s singles. The iSET 2018 National Collegiate Table Tennis Championships is NCTTA’s premier event and will be played in Round Rock, Texas this year in April.

The Midwest Region features scholarship school and current host, Lindenwood University. Lindenwood remains a perennial powerhouse in the Midwest, but other schools are looking to make the hosts work to defend their glory. Northwestern, led by long-time Coach Ned Leuchtner, has a really deep team this year. Look for Northwestern who also qualified in the Women’s team to challenge the top schools. Also, always a favorite, is the University of Minnesota led by John Tranter and Kris Sabas. “The U,” as it is affectionately called, is led by 2 female players. NCTTA is unique in that the Men’s team can be coed as is clearly exemplified with “the U” (University of Minnesota).

Turning to men’s singles and women’s singles, we see a competitive draw on both sides with top men’s singles seeds 1 through 6 from Lindenwood. Brazilian international and Rookie phenom Massao Kohatsu looks to take the title for Lindenwood. On the women’s side, sister of #1 men’s seed, Kohatsu Martina, is also a favorite as is Yixin Zhang, an ex-champ from Wisconsin, now calling University of Minnesota her new school. Zhang helped the then UW Madison team from 2016 claim 2nd place in the competition.

NCTTA Midwest Regional Championship starts on Saturday with Team play and finishes on Sunday with Singles.

NCTTA being a team based league and organization, sometimes singles gets forgotten about, but it shouldn't! NCTTA has singles competitions that take place in EVERY ONE of its divisions! For the tournament schedule, click here

Joe Wells, VP of NCTTA says all of the time, "Have a shot at the Post Season through NCTTA Singles, why wouldn't you!"

Lots of people think that they can qualify to the NCTTA Post Season only as a team, but there are other ways!

NCTTA has been offering singles since 2011 and every division in College Table Tennis has its own singles tournament.

Top singles players from both men and women are able to qualify into the post season with others qualifying through their individual rating via wildcard.

Collegiate singles has developed into a very strong event over the past couple of years. Division singles play has no limit for how many can sign up to play.

Sending out a help wanted ad for the NCTTA Champs in rhymes: brought to you by Mike Reff of the NCTTA Media Committee

Check it out!

In the third week of April, centered in Round Rock,
Volunteers will help out around the clock.
Calling one, calling all to participate,
In the NCTTA Champs, it will be great.
There are many areas to volunteer,
So let’s jump right in to describe them clear.TV production has several aspects,
From operating cameras, to scorekeeping graphics,
You’ll help out in set up and breakdown of equipment,
A valuable asset you’ll be using time well-spent.Umpires help in officiating rules,
Ensuring fair play amongst all competing schools.Score keepers are needed to keep track of score,
It helps the players know how many points to be sure.Registration people help check in and gate control,
They’re of immense assistance with the traffic flow.Media, photography, commentating too,
The list goes on we need all of you!
So if this help wanted ad makes you think
That you want to volunteer, then click on this link!http://www.nctta.org/content/volunteer-signup-form

Please submit your votes by email to elections@nctta.org, with the
following:
1. Your name
2. Your school
3. For each position, Yes or No, in terms of whether you are in support of the candidate
Even though only one candidate is listed for each position, votes need to be
submitted for each of them. If you wish to abstain from voting for a
particular position, then indicate "abstain" for that position.

The deadline for voting is 11:59 PM Eastern Time on Wednesday, May 31.
Only one vote per school will be counted. Invalid votes will not be counted.

If you have any questions, feel free to ask at the email address given above.
Thanks for your participation!